For all intents and purposes, any quality higher than 256kbps is merely a placebo.
Just, no
256kbps is about the speed your ears can process noises at.
Yes, when you play a lossless file the speakers will probably be making vastly different amounts of sound - they objectively
are, that's a fact right there - but the perceived quality is only as high as it's possible to perceive, and your ears won't be able to tell the difference, as a general rule. Play a pristine, beautiful orchestra down a telephone line and it'll still sound like it's coming down a telephone line. Compared to the information contained in a lossless file, we're all walking telephone receivers.
If you think you
can tell the difference, you're either willing yourself to hear a difference, you've got above-average ears, or you're telling porkies. Probably the second one! We all take music very seriously here, would make sense that your ear was more discerning than most. And if that's the case, congrats. You have elite ears. Well done. I'll make you a hat.
And whichever of the three's correct, fair play, by the way! You're enjoying your music, and that's what counts. But the average ear won't be able to tell the difference. A trained ear possibly could. I wouldn't be surprised at all if musicians or people who frequently listen to hi-res audio could distinguish between 256k and 320k, or even 256k and lossless. I've not looked into it very much, admittedly, so if anyone's got anything substantial (i.e. not anecdotal) to contradict me with then I'll happily scoff a bit of humble pie. Eat it right up with beans - I'm speaking from the position of a half-remembered Physics A-Level course, so you may well be able to find something concrete that puts me in my place.
That said, as I'm aware of it, by 320kbps you'd almost definitely be enjoying a big fat placebo. Key word, enjoying! But... the other key word is placebo.
Lossless audio is useful! It so is. You're gaining something with lossless - peace of mind, complete backup... PERFECT for recording music with. But it's more a tool for storage and accurate copying than a way to make your music sound lovely. Listening isn't one of its uses. By and large, anyway! I'm talking broad brushstrokes, here. Maybe you could, possibly, hear a difference in the v. high frequency noises. Someone upthread (Nick?) mentioned cymbals, and as they resonate at a very high frequency anyway, the discrepancies might be more noticeable there. That'd make sense to me. But I, myself, am honestly not that bothered. It's great, lossless. But I'm not missing much by listening to 256kbps in my leisure time. And you're not gaining THAT much if you insist on listening to FLAC.
Again, this is all coming from someone who isn't an audiophile. I'm the unwashed masses. But then it always struck me there's something very counterintuitive about taking something as raw and visceral and immediate as rock music and then making it into something fussy - niggly, fusty and perfectionist. It's almost a contradiction.
It's meant to be wild, and aggressive. 'Sides which, not many of us can listen to proper, full-quality, massive-fidelity audio ALL the time, anyway, and I'd rather enjoy the lower-end stuff all the time and not know what I'm missing than listen to the lower-end stuff
most of the time and compete with a nagging feeling that something's missing. I consider my inability to tell the difference between 256kbps and WAV a blessing, rather than a curse.
I'll come clean and admit that I don't "get" audiophilia. It turns something positive into something negative. Many of my experiences with audiophiles tend to be limited to watching them moan. Grumpy moaning. Not ecstatic moaning. (Though I'm sure a well-mixed 5.1 would get their gears going.) That doesn't seem to be the easiest way to enjoy music, to me. Falling in love doesn't make your platonic friends redundant. I'm glad that you have this really intense and detailed interest in music music, and that you can appreciate it on a higher level. You get to go home and listen to your music on the equivalent of a cinema screen, that's grand. But it's too much of a chore for me. I'm gonna keep rocking out on my cathode ray tube, and you honestly can't convince me that your approach is better. I like being easily impressed. I enjoy it. Ignorance is bliss. Audiophilia, while consummately beautiful and luxurious and all the rest, is one headache that I really don't need.
So there we go. Listen, take my opinions with a pinch of salt. I know my facts are very flimsily supported, and I acknowledge that audiophilia is so alien to me that it almost makes my opinion moot. But there we go.